[Gllug] Euro Patent Law

[Alain Williams]

On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 09:22:53AM +0100, t.clarke wrote:
> I too feel that the prospect of computer programs being patentable rather than
> copyrightable is a miserable one.
> 
> As a matter partly of curiosity, does anyone in the group have any knowledge of
> patent law in regard to what I believe may be called 'prior art'.  I may be
> totally wrong here, but I am under the impression that you can't patent
> anything that has already been invented, or for that matter somnething that you
> yourself have already placed in the lublic domain.
> 
> If this is the case, then possibly there should be a website someplace where we
> can all 'publish' all the trivial and non-trivial code we ever wrote, on the
> basis that its highly likely that anything the big boys want to patent will
> probably contain elements/ideas of stuff already published?

Nice idea, the trouble is that you then need to go to court to try to convince
a non technical jury that you do have prior art, for instance:
	These programs are completely different, one is in C, the other
	in Java/Perl/...

Since most patent holders will go after a 'small' fee (eg �20,000) it is easier
and cheaper to pay that. Legal bills will be greater, the risk of loosing (and
incurring the other side's legal bills), the cost of wasted man power, will
convince most accountants that discression is the better part of valour and so give in.

The 'small' fee is out of the question for Open Source code. If it is a copyright
issue (eg the current SCO spat) the solution is simple: rewrite the code.
That is often not possible where a patent is involved.

Far more effective to stop this patent nonsense in its tracks.

Most modern patents are used to stop the widespread adoption of new ideas; this
is quite the reverse of the original intent of the patent system.


BTW: I believe that the SCO action is (in part) intended to distract us from the
real issue -- patents. Once software patents are in force in the EU as it is in
the US, then M$ will be able to start to move against Linux in a really devstating way.

-- 
Alain Williams

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